Time is money. That’s a phrase that’s thrown around so much these days that it has become somewhat of a cliché, but that takes nothing away from its truthfulness, however. Time is indeed money and anybody who can lay claim to optimal productivity is really just inadvertently pointing out their effective time management practices.

If you’re reading this, chances are the regular time-management strategies you’ve become accustomed to simply haven’t worked all too well for you, which is why you’re still conducting research on the topic. You may even have been searching for training opportunities that can help you master the skill of effective time management. In that regard, consider checking out this STL time management training program.

In any case, you’ve come to the right place, simply because now is the time to apply some radical time-management strategies that will effectively force you to be more productive.

The periodic lock-in

In practice this can resemble any scenario you can personally think of really, but an example of deploying periodic lock-in is when you put yourself in a situation which essentially forces you to focus on completing a specific task, discarding absolutely everything else which could hamper your progress or distract you. I’m talking about someone like a freelance writer who knows her laptop has a battery life of six hours, proceeding to take her work to a McDonald’s restaurant from which they’ll only return once the battery is empty.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking, which means you’d have to make sure you get some meaningful work done during that time.

Because your time is money

There’s nothing quite as effective in multiplying the overall effect of the time strategies you practice as applying two or more of them at the same time. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

What I’m talking about is literally acting like your time is money by monetizing any time that you’re forced to spend away from the task you have to complete. So to extend on our example of the freelance writer who has retreated to her local McDonald’s to lock herself into a few power-hours, she could set up the Callmart app as the only communication channel she would entertain during this designated period of productivity. Not only is this an app to make money online, but it can also be used effectively to make sure that if you have to take a call and take some time away from your primary work, you’re still earning money at a per-minute rate you’ve set to bill anyone who calls you via the app.

Purposeful reconnaissance

Keep a time-tracking journal of how much time you spend on specific tasks during the workday and work out how much that effectively earns you. This is one of the best ways to make sure you allocate your time to the most important tasks as you look back on the data and analyze your productivity in this way.

Honoring your time off

Lastly, set aside some time off from your work which you are to honor religiously. Set an email autoresponder if you have to so that you don’t have any temptations to give in to the common urge to compulsively check your emails, for instance.